Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

On Cooperation

Written:January 4 & 6, 1923First Published:Pravda(No. 115-116)
 May 26-27, 1923Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 33, (p. 467-75)Transcription/Mark-up:Brian BagginsPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive (2000).You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial 
works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

It seems to me that not enough attention is being paid to the
 cooperative movement in our country. Not everyone understands that now,
 since the time of the October revolution and quite apart fromNEP(on the contrary,
 in this connection we must say—because of NEP), our cooperative
 movement has become one of great significance. There is a lot of fantasy in
 the dreams of the old cooperators. Often they are ridiculously fantastic.
 But why are they fantastic? Because people do not understand the
 fundamental, the rock-bottom significance of the working-class political
 struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters. We have
 overthrown the rule of the exploiters, and much that was fantastic, even
 romantic, even banal in the dreams of the old cooperators is now becoming
 unvarnished reality.

Indeed, since political power is in the hands of the working-class,
 since this political power owns all the means of production, the only task,
 indeed, that remains for us is to organize the population in cooperative
 societies. With most of the population organizing cooperatives, the
 socialism which in the past was legitimately treated with ridicule, scorn
 and contempt by those who were rightly convinced that it was necessary to
 wage the class struggle, the struggle for political power, etc., will
 achieve its aim automatically. But not all comrades realize how vastly, how
 infinitely important it is now to organize the population of Russia in
 cooperative societies. By adopting NEP we made a concession to the peasant
 as a trader, to the principal of private trade; it is precisely for this
 reason (contrary to what some people think) that the cooperative movement
 is of such immense importance. All we actually need under NEP is to
 organize the population of Russia in cooperative societies on a
 sufficiently large-scale, for we have now found the degree of combination
 of private interest, of private commercial interest, with state supervision
 and control of this interest, that degree of its subordination to the
 common interests which was formerly the stumbling block for very many
 socialists. Indeed, the power of the state over all large-scale means of
 production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance
 of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small
 peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc. —
 is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society out
 of cooperatives, out of cooperatives alone, which we formerly ridiculed as
 huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to treat as
 such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary to build a complete
 socialist society? It is still not the building of socialist society, but
 it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it.

It is this very circumstance that is underestimated by many of our
 practical workers. They look down upon cooperative societies, failing to
 appreciate their exceptional importance, first, from the standpoint of
 principal (the means of production are owned by the state), and, second,
 from the standpoint of transition to the new system by means that are thesimplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant.

But this again is a fundamental importance. It is one thing to draw out
 fantastic plans for building socialism through all sorts of workers
 associations, and quite another to learn to build socialism in practice in
 such a way thateverysmall peasant could take part in it. That is
 the very stage we have now reached. And there is no doubt that, having
 reached it, we are taking too little advantage of it.

We went too far when we reintroduced NEP, but not because we attached
 too much importance to the principal of free enterprise and trade —
 we want too far because we lost sight of the cooperatives, because we now
 underrate cooperatives, because we are already beginning to forget the vast
 importance of the cooperatives from the above two points of view.

I now propose to discuss with the reader what can and must at once be
 done practically on the basis of this “cooperative” principle. By what
 means can we, and must we, start at once to develop this “cooperative"
 principle so that its socialist meaning may be clear to all?

Cooperation must be politically so organized that it will not only
 generally and always enjoy certain privileges, but that these privileges
 should be of a purely material nature (a favorable bank rate, etc.). The
 cooperatives must be granted state loans that are greater, if only by a
 little, than the loans we grant to private enterprises, even to heavy
 industry, etc.

A social system emerges only if it has the financial backing of a
 definite class. There is no need to mention the hundreds of millions of
 rubles that the birth of “free” capitalism cost. At present we have to
 realize that the cooperatives system is a social system we must now give
 more than ordinary assistance, and we must actually give that assistance.
 But it must be it assistance in the real sense of the word, i.e., it will
 not be enough to interpret it to mean assistance for any kind of
 cooperative trade; by assistance we must mean aid to cooperative trade in
 whichreally large masses of the population actually take part.It
 is certainly a correct form of assistance to give a bonus to peasants who
 take part in cooperative trade; but the whole point is to verify the nature
 of this participation, to verify the awareness behind it, and to verify its
 quality. Strictly speaking, when a cooperator goes to a village and opens
 cooperative store, the people take no part in this whenever; but at the
 same time guided by their own interests they will hasten to try to take
 part in it.

There is another aspect this question. From the point of view of the
 “enlightened” European there is not much left for us to do to induce
 absolutely everyone to take not a passive, but inactive part in cooperative
 operations. Strictly speaking, there is“only”one thing we have
 left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they
 understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the
 cooperatives, and organizes participation.“only”the fact. There
 are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve
 this “only", there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people
 must go through a period of cultural development. Therefore, our rule must
 be: as little philosophizing and as few acrobatics as possible. In this
 respect NEP is an advance, because it is adjustable to the level of the
 most ordinary peasant and does not demand anything higher of him. But it
 will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the
 work of the cooperatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or
 two decades. Nevertheless, it will be a distinct historical epoch, and
 without this historical epoch, without universal literacy, without a proper
 degree of efficiency, without training the population sufficiently to
 acquire the habit of book reading, and without the material basis for this,
 without a certain sufficiency to safeguard against, say, bad harvests,
 famine, etc.—without this we shall not achieve our object. The
 thing now is to learn to combine the wide revolutionary range of action,
 the revolutionary enthusiasm which we have displayed, and displayed
 abundantly, and crowned with complete success—to learn to combine
 this with (I'm almost inclined to say) the ability to be an efficient and
 capable trader, which is quite enough to be a good cooperator. By ability
 to be a trader I mean the ability to be a cultured trader. Let those
 Russians, or peasants, who imagine that since they trade they are good
 traders, get that well into their heads. This does not follow that all.
 They do trade, but that is far from being cultured traders. They now trade
 in an Asiatic manner, but to be a good trader one must trade in the
 European manner. They are a whole epoch behind in that.

In conclusion: a number of economic, financial and banking privileges
 must be granted to the cooperatives—this is the way our socialist
 state must promote the new principle on which the population must be
 organized. But this is only the general outline of the task; it does not
 define and depict in detail the entire content of the practical task, i.e.,
 we must find what form of “bonus” to give for joining the cooperatives (and
 the terms on which we should give it), the form of bonus by which we shall
 assist the cooperative sufficiently, the form of bonus that will produce
 the civilized cooperator. And given social ownership of the means of
 production, given the class victory of the proletariat over the
 bourgeoisie, the system of civilized cooperators is the system of
 socialism.

January 4, 1923

Whenever I wrote about the New Economic Policy I always quoted the
 article on state capitalism which I wrote in 1918["Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality;
 part III]. This has more than once aroused doubts in the minds of
 certain young comrades but their doubts were mainly on abstract political
 points.

It seemed to them that the term “state capitalism” could not be applied
 to a system under which the means of production were owned by the
 working-class, a working-class that held political power. They did not
 notice, however, that I use the term “state capitalism",firstly,to connect historically our present position with the position adopted in
 my controversy with the so-called Left Communists; also, I argued at the
 time that state capitalism would be superior to our existing economy. It
 was important for me to show the continuity between ordinary state
 capitalism and the unusual, even very unusual, state capitalism to which I
 referred in introducing the reader to the New Economic Policy.Secondly,the practical purpose was always important to me. And
 the practical purpose of our New Economic Policy was to lease out
 concessions. In the prevailing circumstances, concessions in our country
 would unquestionably have been a pure type of state capitalism. That is how
 I argued about state capitalism.

But there is another aspect of the matter for which we may need state
 capitalism, or at least a comparison with it. It is a question of
 cooperatives.

In the capitalist state, cooperatives are no doubt collective capitalist
 institutions. Nor is there any doubt that under our present economic
 conditions, when we combine private capitalist enterprises—but in
 no other way than nationalized land and in no other way than under the
 control of the working-class state—with enterprises of the
 consistently socialist type (the means of production, the land on which the
 enterprises are situated, and the enterprises as a whole belonging to the
 state), the question arises about a third type of enterprise, the
 cooperatives, which were not formally regarded as an independent type
 differing fundamentally from the others. Under private capitalism,
 cooperative enterprises differ from capitalist enterprises as collective
 enterprises differ from private enterprises. Under state capitalism,
 cooperative enterprises differ from state capitalist enterprises, firstly,
 because they are private enterprises, and, secondly, because they are
 collective enterprises. Under our present system, cooperative enterprises
 differ from private capitalist enterprises because they are collective
 enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on
 which they are situated and means of production belong to the state, i.e.,
 the working-class.

This circumstance is not considered sufficiently when cooperatives are
 discussed. It is forgotten that owing to the special features of our
 political system, our cooperatives acquire an altogether exceptional
 significance. If we exclude concessions, which, incidentally, have not
 developed on any considerable scale, cooperation under our conditions
 nearly always coincides fully with socialism.

Let me explain what I mean. Why were the plans of the old cooperators,
 from Robert Owen onwards, fantastic? Because they dreamed of peacefully
 remodeling contemporary society into socialism without taking account of
 such fundamental questions as the class struggle, the capture of political
 power by the working-class, the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting
 class. That is why we are right in regarding as entirely fantastic this
 “cooperative” socialism, and as romantic, and even banal, the dream of
 transforming class enemies into class collaborators and class war into
 class peace (so-called class truce) by merely organizing the population in
 cooperative societies.

Undoubtedly we were right from the point of view of the fundamental task
 of the present day, for socialism cannot be established without a class
 struggle for the political power and a state.

But see how things have changed now that the political power is in the
 hands of the working-class, now that the political power of the exploiters
 is overthrown and all the means of production (except those which the
 workers' state voluntarily abandons on specified terms and for a certain
 time to the exploiters in the form of concessions) are owned by the
 working-class.

Now we are entitled to say that for us the mere growth of cooperation
 (with the “slight” exception mentioned above) is identical with the growth  of socialism, and at the same time we have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism. The radical modification is this; formerly we placed, and had to place, the main emphasis on the political struggle, on revolution, on winning political power, etc. Now the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organizational, “cultural” work. I should say that emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a worldscale. If we leave that aside, however, and confine ourselves to internal economic relations, the emphasis in our work is certainly shifting to education.

Two main tasks confront us, which constitute the epoch—to
 reorganize our machinery of state, which is utterly useless, in which we
 took over in its entirety from the preceding epoch; during the past five
 years of struggle we did not, and could not, drastically reorganize it. Our second task is educational work among the peasants. And the economic object of this educational work among the peasants is to organize the latter in cooperative societies. If the whole of the peasantry had been organized in cooperatives, we would by now have been standing with both feet on the soil of socialism. But the organization of the entire peasantry in cooperative societies presupposes a standard of culture, and the peasants (precisely among the peasants as the overwhelming mass) that cannot, in fact, be achieved without a cultural revolution.

Our opponents told us repeatedly that we were rash in undertaking to
 implant socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were
 misled by our having started from the opposite end to that prescribed by theory (the theory of pedants of all kinds), because in our country the
 political and social revolution preceded the cultural revolution, that very cultural revolution which nevertheless now confronts us.

This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a
 completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a
 purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of
 production, we must have a certain material base).

January 6, 1923

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